When I moved to the Vail Valley from Oregon during the summer of 2010, one of the first and smartest things I did was join Ellen Miller’s trail running group, the Mountain Divas. One or two days a week at dawn, I’d show up at the Vail Athletic Club to rendezvous with Miller and the Divas—typically 10 and sometimes 20 women of all ages—who didn’t seem to mind that I was the only male in the group. 

Running with the Divas was a badge of honor. Because these ladies all were badasses. Especially Miller, a US Mountain Running Team manager/coach, the first American woman to summit Everest from both Nepal and Tibet (in 2001 and 2002) who followed that achievement seven years later, at 54, by summiting 27,940-ft Lhotse with two artificial hips.

After stretching, we’d head up Vail Mountain, usually on the Berry Picker Trail, to run intervals, bursts of speed followed by equal amounts of recovery time spent walking. Still acclimating from more than a decade at sea level, lungs and legs burning, I typically fell to the end of the pack, struggling to suck oxygen out of the thin mountain air—it felt like I was breathing through a straw with an elephant sitting on my chest—wondering why I was subjecting myself to such torture. Noticing my distress, Miller, sprightly and effervescent, would fall back and trot by my side, and with a sunshine-y smile, offer words of encouragement, not just to me, but to the entire group.

“It’s a blessing to be out here on this mountain,” she’d say during one of the rest periods, arms outstretched, taking in the glorious view of I-70 snaking up Vail Pass and the ragged peaks of the Gore Range blazing on the eastern horizon. “Think of someone who would like to be here today—they might be in the hospital or maybe they’re in a wheelchair—think about that person and dedicate this run to them.” And just like that, my pain and my self-pity evaporated.

“A run with Ellen Miller is equivalent to three doses of Prozac,” one writer observed after running with the Divas, in a 2014 profile of Miller in Runner’s World. “Miller’s indefatigable positivity is matched only by her ability to suffer.”

And to endure.

“I remember being on my hands and knees on the north side of Everest, whimpering to an expedition operator on the radio, ‘I don’t know if I can do this,’” she told Runner’s World, recalling how she felt as she struggled, without supplemental oxygen, to ascend above 25,000 feet in the cold thin air in 2001. “The operator looked at me through a telescope and said, ‘Ellen, get up.’ Then he said, ‘Take one step.’ I took one. ‘Take another.’ That coaching helped me get back up.”

And Miller’s example helped me recently as, in my mid-50s, my aging body, like my 2015 4Runner with more than 130,000 miles on the odometer, has required ever-more intensive maintenance, including arthroscopic knee surgery in November (new shocks/struts!) and a cardiac ablation in the Vail Health cath lab to prevent my heart from unpredictably revving up to 180 bpm and sticking there (new timing belt!). Recuperating over the winter, in the places where I’d usually run, I learned to walk again, and discovered what had been a familiar world, altogether anew. That experience was the inspiration behind this issue’s cover story (“Car-free, Carefree”). 

That, and Miller. After running with the Divas my first summer, we’d occasionally cross paths—at the Dynafit 10k @ 10,000 Feet trail run around Mid-Vail, or skinning up Simba on Miller’s Vail Mountain Uphill fundraiser for her Mountain Running Team. These days, occasionally I’ll see Ellen walking her beloved Lab, Stella, around our Miller Ranch neighborhood, but more often I see her on Facebook, posting an ebullient selfie from somewhere high in the Gore Range. 

“I’m not a runner anymore—I have two artificial hips and a reconstructed pelvis,” the 64-year-old told me one bluebird afternoon in April. “It doesn’t matter that I can’t run because I can hike. I can still get up way high in the Gore or trek in the Himalaya. I’ve transitioned from running to walking and it’s a beautiful thing: to slow down and tune into what is going on in the natural world, especially in the wilderness.”

If you’re lucky, you may meet Ellen at one of the many trailheads around the valley where she serves as a volunteer educator/ambassador/wilderness ranger for the Town of Vail, the Vail Valley Mountain Trails Alliance (VVMTA), and the Eagle/Summit Wilderness Alliance. This summer, hike responsibly and follow Ellen’s example: Join a VVMTA wilderness trail work party (vvmta.org), and when you’re out there, think about someone who can’t, but wishes they could, be in the mountains, walking in your footsteps.

Ted Katauskas
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